Orangutan

Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii)

These great apes were off exhibit for almost a year while the zoo constructed a new habitat for them. The grand opening was in September and it has been fun to see the orangutans get more and more used to their new home. Pictured here are two of them. The first is the mother of the one on the right. They like to come up close to people and watch them. In the videos, the mother is showing off her ghost disguise. I have seen her do this at least twice and the second time she came up to the window and “surprised” some people.

Bats

It is Halloween and I thought this would be appropriate. There are two species of bat at the Zoo:

Rodrigues Flying Fox (Pteropus rodricensis)

And

Egyptian Fruit Bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus)

They are one of my favorite animals at the zoo. Of all the animals, the bats are always visible and they are always active. They also almost always have food. It is fun to watch them climb around with those wings. 

Rodrigues Flying Fox

Egyptian Fruit Bat

Lion

African Lion (Panthera leo)

To make up for a long absence, I am doing a larger post about a very popular animal that can be found at most zoos. I don’t know why they are so popular, except that we are told to think so, from movies, TV, and books. Everytime I see them at the zoo they are usually sleeping. So this time was a nice surprise. The lions were actually awake and some were being active as seen in this video. It shows a lioness being very interested in several small children who were laughing and having fun…though I think the lion was more frustrated than anything else.

This was fun to watch and it was also nice because my sister, Elina, had come that day with Ruth and I. Here is Elina with that same lion. I was impressed at how large they really are.